Holocaust denial and Muslim cartoons

In the latest edition of eSkeptic, Michael Shermer has an essay on the Holocaust denier David Irving. (The article was not yet up when I posted this.) Irving was recently sentenced to 3 years in jail in Austria for denying the holocaust. Coming on the heels of the cartoon controversy he draws the obvious comparison.

“More women died in the back seat of Edward Kennedy’s car at Chappaquiddick than ever died in a gas chamber at Auschwitz.”
Is this line more offensive to Jews than an editorial cartoon depicting the prophet Muhammad with a turban bomb is to Muslims?
Apparently it is, because the editorial cartoonists are still free, whereas the man who made this statement — British author David Irving — was sentenced February 20 to three years in an Austrian jail for violating an Austrian law that says it is a crime if a person “denies, grossly trivializes, approves or seeks to justify the National Socialist genocide or other national socialist crimes against humanity.”

I’m not sure it’s a fair comparison; I don’t know what sort of hate speech laws Denmark has. And the Austrian law is very specific to the Holocaust. As he points out, denying the holocaust is a crime in much of Europe.

Today, you may be imprisoned or fined for dissenting from the accepted Holocaust
history in the following countries: Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Czech
Republic, France, Germany, Israel, Lithuania, New Zealand, Poland, Romania,
Slovakia, and Switzerland.

The Muslim cartoons were reprinted in France and Germany, so they may have more general hate-speech laws that are relevant.

You can add to that list Sweden, where hate speech laws were used to prosecute a priest for speaking out against homosexuality. Fortunately in that case, the Swedish Supreme Court overturned the verdict. It’s clear that Europeans have a different approach to free speech than Americans.

Shermer defends Irving’s rights and argues against restrictions on free speech. Of course he uses a slippery slope argument.

Freedom is a principle that must be applied indiscriminately. We have to defend
David Irving in order to defend ourselves. My freedoms are inextricably tied to
Irving’s freedoms. Once the laws are in place to jail dissidents of Holocaust
history, what’s to stop them from spreading to dissenters of religious or
political histories, or to skepticism of any sort that deviates from the
accepted canon?

It’s not clear that there is a logical leap from outlawing Holocaust denial to outlawing religious or political dissenters. But personally, I agree with him. Free speech is important enough to protect, even if it’s speech of people you disagree with. I know some of you have different tolerances for what types of speech should be protected. Either way I think it’s important to talk about and to learn from Europe’s experiences.